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Diffeomorphic DAZ-to-Blender

marblemarble Posts: 7,500
in Blender Discussion

Just a post for those interested in exporting to Blender. 

The Diffeomorphic DAZ Importer is a free utility with scripts for both DAZ Studio and Blender and it has been updated for Blender 2.8. I have just happened across a new video tutorial for this latest version (1.4) and maybe this time I'll have a little more success than my previous attempt when I found it a little confusing to follow the text instructions on Thomas Larsson's site.

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Comments

  • MilosGulanMilosGulan Posts: 1,966

    Thank You, very interesting.

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500
    MilosGulan said:

    Thank You, very interesting.

    Yes, I finally managed to export a figure to Blender. However, I can't say that I like the results - the skin looks flat and featureless, geografts don't export nicely (colours don't match, geometry intersects the underlying figure and this shows in the render). My initial impression is that it is probably better to stick with IRay until I can find a better export method. I've just bought Alembic in the BYO-FG sale so I will get around to sometime soon.

  • Silver DolphinSilver Dolphin Posts: 1,609

    Wow, you are trying to get geographs to work in blender? Is that even possible? I just keep things as simple as possible and convert to base shaders and then go in a fix textures in shader manager in blender. If new diffeomorphic does geographs this is a major deal. I'll have to check this out. I don't do stills in blender just animations. I try to do all my stills in daz, in either opengl or iray.

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500
    edited November 2019
    Silver Dolphin said:

    Wow, you are trying to get geographs to work in blender? Is that even possible? I just keep things as simple as possible and convert to base shaders and then go in a fix textures in shader manager in blender. If new diffeomorphic does geographs this is a major deal. I'll have to check this out. I don't do stills in blender just animations. I try to do all my stills in daz, in either opengl or iray.

    Great - if you figure it out, let us know! That's not sarcasm, I'm serious. For me, the lack of support for geografts is a deal-breaker so if the DAZ Importer can't do it seamlessly, it is pointless me trying to use it. BTW, I can't post pictures of the grafts because, as you probably guessed, they are 3rd. party anatomical elements which are designed to merge with the base mesh and the base textures and materials - again *seamlessly*.

    Post edited by marble on
  • andya_b341b7c5f5andya_b341b7c5f5 Posts: 694

    With respect to the handling of geografts by this plugin, have a look at the 'Merge Anatomy' option, under the 'Finishing' section.

    There is a section in the docs on the Diffeomorphic blog about this, which begins:

    Merge Anatomy

    A grafted item is a high-density mesh which can replace a low-density region of another mesh. This is typically used to add pieces of anatomy to characters. It is most commonly used for genitalia, but can be used for other types of anatomy as well, such as horns or tails. The idea is to remove the body vertices hidden by the piece of anatomy, and to merge common vertices at the boundary and create a single seamless mesh from the two original meshes.

    And there is more, with pictures.  Might not get the textures 100% right, but at least the geometry is dealt with. 

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500
    andya_b341b7c5f5 said:

    With respect to the handling of geografts by this plugin, have a look at the 'Merge Anatomy' option, under the 'Finishing' section.

    There is a section in the docs on the Diffeomorphic blog about this, which begins:

    Merge Anatomy

    A grafted item is a high-density mesh which can replace a low-density region of another mesh. This is typically used to add pieces of anatomy to characters. It is most commonly used for genitalia, but can be used for other types of anatomy as well, such as horns or tails. The idea is to remove the body vertices hidden by the piece of anatomy, and to merge common vertices at the boundary and create a single seamless mesh from the two original meshes.

    And there is more, with pictures.  Might not get the textures 100% right, but at least the geometry is dealt with. 

    Thanks, I wan't aware of that - I'll take a look later. Even if that problem is resolved, I'm still not happy with the texture/materials conversion. The render - even in Cycles, looks so flat - no depth, no specularity, no HD details, no pores, etc. Again, I'm probably missing something in the setup that wasn't covered in the video above so I need to go back to the Diffeomorphic site and do some reading.

  • PsyckosamaPsyckosama Posts: 495
    marble said:
    andya_b341b7c5f5 said:

    With respect to the handling of geografts by this plugin, have a look at the 'Merge Anatomy' option, under the 'Finishing' section.

    There is a section in the docs on the Diffeomorphic blog about this, which begins:

    Merge Anatomy

    A grafted item is a high-density mesh which can replace a low-density region of another mesh. This is typically used to add pieces of anatomy to characters. It is most commonly used for genitalia, but can be used for other types of anatomy as well, such as horns or tails. The idea is to remove the body vertices hidden by the piece of anatomy, and to merge common vertices at the boundary and create a single seamless mesh from the two original meshes.

    And there is more, with pictures.  Might not get the textures 100% right, but at least the geometry is dealt with. 

    Thanks, I wan't aware of that - I'll take a look later. Even if that problem is resolved, I'm still not happy with the texture/materials conversion. The render - even in Cycles, looks so flat - no depth, no specularity, no HD details, no pores, etc. Again, I'm probably missing something in the setup that wasn't covered in the video above so I need to go back to the Diffeomorphic site and do some reading.

    Did you convert the materials over? Because you can't just move Iray or 3dlight into cycles and expect it to Just Work.

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500
    Psyckosama said:
    marble said:
    andya_b341b7c5f5 said:

    With respect to the handling of geografts by this plugin, have a look at the 'Merge Anatomy' option, under the 'Finishing' section.

    There is a section in the docs on the Diffeomorphic blog about this, which begins:

    Merge Anatomy

    A grafted item is a high-density mesh which can replace a low-density region of another mesh. This is typically used to add pieces of anatomy to characters. It is most commonly used for genitalia, but can be used for other types of anatomy as well, such as horns or tails. The idea is to remove the body vertices hidden by the piece of anatomy, and to merge common vertices at the boundary and create a single seamless mesh from the two original meshes.

    And there is more, with pictures.  Might not get the textures 100% right, but at least the geometry is dealt with. 

    Thanks, I wan't aware of that - I'll take a look later. Even if that problem is resolved, I'm still not happy with the texture/materials conversion. The render - even in Cycles, looks so flat - no depth, no specularity, no HD details, no pores, etc. Again, I'm probably missing something in the setup that wasn't covered in the video above so I need to go back to the Diffeomorphic site and do some reading.

    Did you convert the materials over? Because you can't just move Iray or 3dlight into cycles and expect it to Just Work.

    Unfortunately, it is the nature of this forum that subjects get spread over different threads (I'm at fault for that as much as anyone). So there has been a similar discussion - with examples and advice - going on in this thread: 

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5095396/#Comment_5095396

  • Silver DolphinSilver Dolphin Posts: 1,609

    Just make sure your render engine is set to cycles in blender first, then make sure all your textures on the daz side are set to daz Iray, now transfer and enjoy. This is over simplified but I'm no expert. I won't explain the node based shader system in blender & if you don't know how to add the Iray Daz shader to older stuff you can buy a converter from the PA's here at store. Don't have evee set as render engine this messes up the conversion. I occasionally have to fix eyes and some other stuff but that is where you have to learn about blender's shader system to fix these things.

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500
    Silver Dolphin said:

    Just make sure your render engine is set to cycles in blender first, then make sure all your textures on the daz side are set to daz Iray, now transfer and enjoy. This is over simplified but I'm no expert. I won't explain the node based shader system in blender & if you don't know how to add the Iray Daz shader to older stuff you can buy a converter from the PA's here at store. Don't have evee set as render engine this messes up the conversion. I occasionally have to fix eyes and some other stuff but that is where you have to learn about blender's shader system to fix these things.

    Yes, I know how to change the shaders in DAZ Studio - I've been playing with it for 15 years. During that time I have collected a lot of content which is pre-IRay and I still use some of it. I have been through the conversion to IRay materials so many times that I do it automatically now - and usually save them back to my library in IRay format. The tip about setting the Blender engine to Cycles is a good one and came up in the other thred (linked above). I'm still seeing black eyes and, in my personal opinion, what I'm getting in Cycles is still far short of the quality I see in IRay but I do need to get more familiar with Blender. I don't believe that Diffeomoprphic is the one-click solution that some claim it to be - I suspect that their previous experience in Blender allows them to set up the right environment to produce good renders but those settings still need to be learned.

  • andya_b341b7c5f5andya_b341b7c5f5 Posts: 694
    marble said:
    Silver Dolphin said:

    Just make sure your render engine is set to cycles in blender first, then make sure all your textures on the daz side are set to daz Iray, now transfer and enjoy. This is over simplified but I'm no expert. I won't explain the node based shader system in blender & if you don't know how to add the Iray Daz shader to older stuff you can buy a converter from the PA's here at store. Don't have evee set as render engine this messes up the conversion. I occasionally have to fix eyes and some other stuff but that is where you have to learn about blender's shader system to fix these things.

    Yes, I know how to change the shaders in DAZ Studio - I've been playing with it for 15 years. During that time I have collected a lot of content which is pre-IRay and I still use some of it. I have been through the conversion to IRay materials so many times that I do it automatically now - and usually save them back to my library in IRay format. The tip about setting the Blender engine to Cycles is a good one and came up in the other thred (linked above). I'm still seeing black eyes and, in my personal opinion, what I'm getting in Cycles is still far short of the quality I see in IRay but I do need to get more familiar with Blender. I don't believe that Diffeomoprphic is the one-click solution that some claim it to be - I suspect that their previous experience in Blender allows them to set up the right environment to produce good renders but those settings still need to be learned.

    Whilst I am a fan of the Daz Importer, I have to agree that there seems to be a particular problem with materials for eyes.  A quick test transferring a base G8F gives me eyes with a dirty grey sclera - not black, and not the rather unreal white you see in Iray, just muddy grey.  Looking at the image texture, the sclera is quite a dark grey, so something in the way Iray works is increasing the 'whiteness' significantly whereas the node tree created by the Daz Importer plugin isn't replicating this correctly.  I suspect, based on a couple of simple experiments, it is the way the Base Color (white) is mixed in by Iray in DS.  In the Blender node tree, there is a Multiply node which looks like it is supposed to handle this, but it isn't/can't, partly because it's not connected where it should be.  A couple of minor changes make the sclera look a good deal better, and there are probably a number of approaches to correcting this particular issue.

    I would also say the base G8F skin isn't looking great either, kind of plastic.  Without detailed knowledge of the Iray internals, these things are bound to be a bit of a shot in the dark, and given how varied the Iray materials created by vendors are, there is something of a moving target here.  For one example, I notice some Daz vendors use very high translucency values with washed out image maps, whereas others use low translucency and more saturated images, and yet the end result is very similar.  There doesn't seem to be a standard way to do Iray materials, more a case of getting the effect you want and not worrying about how.

  • DustRiderDustRider Posts: 2,754
    andya_b341b7c5f5 said:
    marble said:
    Silver Dolphin said:

    Just make sure your render engine is set to cycles in blender first, then make sure all your textures on the daz side are set to daz Iray, now transfer and enjoy. This is over simplified but I'm no expert. I won't explain the node based shader system in blender & if you don't know how to add the Iray Daz shader to older stuff you can buy a converter from the PA's here at store. Don't have evee set as render engine this messes up the conversion. I occasionally have to fix eyes and some other stuff but that is where you have to learn about blender's shader system to fix these things.

    Yes, I know how to change the shaders in DAZ Studio - I've been playing with it for 15 years. During that time I have collected a lot of content which is pre-IRay and I still use some of it. I have been through the conversion to IRay materials so many times that I do it automatically now - and usually save them back to my library in IRay format. The tip about setting the Blender engine to Cycles is a good one and came up in the other thred (linked above). I'm still seeing black eyes and, in my personal opinion, what I'm getting in Cycles is still far short of the quality I see in IRay but I do need to get more familiar with Blender. I don't believe that Diffeomoprphic is the one-click solution that some claim it to be - I suspect that their previous experience in Blender allows them to set up the right environment to produce good renders but those settings still need to be learned.

    Whilst I am a fan of the Daz Importer, I have to agree that there seems to be a particular problem with materials for eyes.  A quick test transferring a base G8F gives me eyes with a dirty grey sclera - not black, and not the rather unreal white you see in Iray, just muddy grey.  Looking at the image texture, the sclera is quite a dark grey, so something in the way Iray works is increasing the 'whiteness' significantly whereas the node tree created by the Daz Importer plugin isn't replicating this correctly.  I suspect, based on a couple of simple experiments, it is the way the Base Color (white) is mixed in by Iray in DS.  In the Blender node tree, there is a Multiply node which looks like it is supposed to handle this, but it isn't/can't, partly because it's not connected where it should be.  A couple of minor changes make the sclera look a good deal better, and there are probably a number of approaches to correcting this particular issue.

    I would also say the base G8F skin isn't looking great either, kind of plastic.  Without detailed knowledge of the Iray internals, these things are bound to be a bit of a shot in the dark, and given how varied the Iray materials created by vendors are, there is something of a moving target here.  For one example, I notice some Daz vendors use very high translucency values with washed out image maps, whereas others use low translucency and more saturated images, and yet the end result is very similar.  There doesn't seem to be a standard way to do Iray materials, more a case of getting the effect you want and not worrying about how.

    What is used all depends on the desired skin results/effects. Using a low saturation image in translucency will allow increasing the translucency to high values while retaining the skin details, but also increases render times. The other approach will make render times much faster, but will in general doesn't give the same SSS effects. The first method is the newer method DAZ used with G8 and dual lobe specularity. The other is generally the older method used prior to dual lobe specular being introduced, and still preferred by some PA's.

  • HonzoHonzo Posts: 193

    Forgive me for necroing this thread, but I am quite interested in exporting Daz figures to Blender and I wonder if anyone has figured more of this out, or if Diffeomorphic has addressed them? Any info would be appreciated.

  • andya_b341b7c5f5andya_b341b7c5f5 Posts: 694
    Honzo said:

    Forgive me for necroing this thread, but I am quite interested in exporting Daz figures to Blender and I wonder if anyone has figured more of this out, or if Diffeomorphic has addressed them? Any info would be appreciated.

    Give the development version of the Daz Importer (which is what the author, Thomas Larsson, himself calls it) a try.  Mr Larsson has been quite active over the last few weeks making improvements and fixing issues, but these changes are not yet in the 'stable' version.  You may find you get better results than you did previously, though I find it varies from scene to scene.

  • HonzoHonzo Posts: 193
    andya_b341b7c5f5 said:
    Honzo said:

    Forgive me for necroing this thread, but I am quite interested in exporting Daz figures to Blender and I wonder if anyone has figured more of this out, or if Diffeomorphic has addressed them? Any info would be appreciated.

    Give the development version of the Daz Importer (which is what the author, Thomas Larsson, himself calls it) a try.  Mr Larsson has been quite active over the last few weeks making improvements and fixing issues, but these changes are not yet in the 'stable' version.  You may find you get better results than you did previously, though I find it varies from scene to scene.

    I have just been wrestling with the 'stable' version, with no success. The installation directions don't match observations, but I did get the Daz end to (apparently) work by following the guide book. However, the Blender end doesn't seem to work, and I don't know Blender well enough to understand the error messages. They SEEM to have something to do with bad pathways.  So, here I am, hoping for advice...
     

    I will give the development version a try, in the meantime.

     

  • HonzoHonzo Posts: 193

    I found and downloaded the development version (I think it's the latest?) from bitbucket, but I'm not sure how to proceed. Do I need remove anything from either the blender or Daz end, or just run the add-on installer in blender?

  • KitsumoKitsumo Posts: 1,216
    Honzo said:
    andya_b341b7c5f5 said:
    Honzo said:

    Forgive me for necroing this thread, but I am quite interested in exporting Daz figures to Blender and I wonder if anyone has figured more of this out, or if Diffeomorphic has addressed them? Any info would be appreciated.

    Give the development version of the Daz Importer (which is what the author, Thomas Larsson, himself calls it) a try.  Mr Larsson has been quite active over the last few weeks making improvements and fixing issues, but these changes are not yet in the 'stable' version.  You may find you get better results than you did previously, though I find it varies from scene to scene.

    I have just been wrestling with the 'stable' version, with no success. The installation directions don't match observations, but I did get the Daz end to (apparently) work by following the guide book. However, the Blender end doesn't seem to work, and I don't know Blender well enough to understand the error messages. They SEEM to have something to do with bad pathways.  So, here I am, hoping for advice...
     

    I will give the development version a try, in the meantime.

     

     

    Honzo said:

    I found and downloaded the development version (I think it's the latest?) from bitbucket, but I'm not sure how to proceed. Do I need remove anything from either the blender or Daz end, or just run the add-on installer in blender?

    Hi, I just stumbled across this thread and was wondering if you were still having issues. I installed the development version, so I'm not sure about upgrading from the previous one. You should be able to disable the old addon and that should remove it from Blender. Once you get the new one installed, the most important thing is configuring the directories so it can find your DS content folders.

    If you're having trouble importing scene files, try starting with a simple scene (like just one character with a simple outfit). Sometimes the importer has trouble with big complex scenes. There are some items that won't import for some reason and it can be a real pain to track those down.

  • flaviudeceanflaviudecean Posts: 9

    Here are the instructions for this excellent plugin:

    https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/

    There is a forum where the author himself is active:

    https://blenderartists.org/t/daz-importer/684697/654

    The latest version, an issue reporting system and even the history of the commits are available in the repository:

    https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/commits/

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715
    edited July 2020

    The only issue I had was figuring out what libraries I need to include; you'll have issues if you don't set them up correctly

    I leave one blank and put whatever is missing there, should there be one; poses aren't needed unless there is something that adds to the data folder.

    Check out the log file; very useful in telling you what went wrong: Thomas didn't code that error system for the fun of it!

    This is part of my process:

    Export To Blender

    - Save Character at high res
    - Save json at base
    -- either with or without a pose - if it has a pose it becomes the default A/T Pose so add new poses would be an issue.

    (I've added this for here: open blender, A to select all items and delete them - x or delete; although not required, it makes importing whilst you figure stuff out easier; you will, however, need to add a camera and light at some stage)

    ----------------------------------------------------
    Import in Blender
    --------------------------
    ** CORRECTIONS
    * Rig is selected when file imports
    - A to select all
    - Merge Rigs
    - Check correct by making sure a clothing item can be hidden, and face bones are still there.

    * Make all Bones Poseable

    You don't need to do anything else; hit F12 to render and you'll get something, presuming you have camera and lights; Shift A to add Camera and Lights.

    This is ideal if you have the character posed and just want to render, knowing you wont need to add a new pose, although you can tweak to your heart's content.

    I then go on to deal with materials, morphs and finishing.

    I further add my own custom materials and set up the pose library with at least the A-Pose added.

    I can't add a Blend file as I was going to include my light set up and backdrop, which I use whilst checking the materials are correct and before adding props.

    libs.jpg
    987 x 635 - 158K
    Post edited by nicstt on
  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715
    edited July 2020

    I've not seen it mentioned, and thought I'd share with others.

    If you save pose libraries on a character, these can actually be appended onto another character; I've not yet had issues using them.

    Just go to the Action Folder to find the library of any given .blend file; if it has the same name then Blender will do the usual and append .001 etc

    Post edited by nicstt on
  • the5amkebabthe5amkebab Posts: 103

    Can anyone help me out with the "highdef" script, do I install it just as I did the original script so it comes up as another export option in the "File" menu in Daz (ideally under "export basic data"?) and do I need to reinstall the original script and plug in to a more updated version for it to work properly?

    I'm currently using development build "Diffeomorphic-import-daz-9720efcf7e19"

    I've tried searching but haven't found the right answer anywhere yet, the term "highdef" hasn't brought anythig up yet and the term "HD" is too short to search.

    Thanks.

     

  • KitsumoKitsumo Posts: 1,216
    edited July 2020

    Edit: Wrong thread. Too early. Need more coffee.

    Post edited by Kitsumo on
  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715
    Kitsumo said:

    Edit: Wrong thread. Too early. Need more coffee.

    I know that feeling

  • Emo SludgeEmo Sludge Posts: 79
    the5amkebab said:

    Can anyone help me out with the "highdef" script, do I install it just as I did the original script so it comes up as another export option in the "File" menu in Daz (ideally under "export basic data"?) and do I need to reinstall the original script and plug in to a more updated version for it to work properly?

    I'm currently using development build "Diffeomorphic-import-daz-9720efcf7e19"

    I've tried searching but haven't found the right answer anywhere yet, the term "highdef" hasn't brought anythig up yet and the term "HD" is too short to search.

    Thanks.

     

    Yeah you just install it the same way as before. 

  • ThomasLarssonThomasLarsson Posts: 94

    Hello, Diffeomorphic here. I will try to monitor this thread and answer questions. Another place which I do monitor regularly is the bug tracker.

  • TheKDTheKD Posts: 2,691
    ThomasLarsson said:

    Hello, Diffeomorphic here. I will try to monitor this thread and answer questions. Another place which I do monitor regularly is the bug tracker.

    Ah great to see you pop up in here!

  • AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,169

    Hello Thomas and welcome :)

  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 2,964
    ThomasLarsson said:

    Hello, Diffeomorphic here. I will try to monitor this thread and answer questions. Another place which I do monitor regularly is the bug tracker.

    Welcome, Thomas. Thank you for an amazing project.

  • benniewoodellbenniewoodell Posts: 1,973
    ThomasLarsson said:

    Hello, Diffeomorphic here. I will try to monitor this thread and answer questions. Another place which I do monitor regularly is the bug tracker.

    Hi Thomas! Thank you so much for all you do! I made a short film I'm so proud of this year thanks to you and your work :) 

  • CinusCinus Posts: 118

    @ThomasLarsson Thanks for such a great tool! Please consider adding a "Donate" button to your Diffeomorphic web site.

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